Thursday, April 22, 2010

It List: Thursday

So after all that praising of Todd Rundgren the other day, he goes and plays almost an entire set of blues rock at Trees two nights ago. Ouch. It was cool hearing "Open My Eyes," originally performed with Nazz, but man, it was a bit much. I don't why older musicians feel the need to get in touch with their "roots," even ones they weren't necessarily ever in touch with in the first place.

Trees was the same as it ever was; it was as if it never closed. Todd was getting a bit grumpy about some of the set-up, which yielded his best quote of the night: "Man, I love this gig: Can't see shit. Can't hear shit. And my guitarist has a fucking tree in front of him." One wonders how used Rundgren probably got to larger venues in his heyday, and I hear that's a hard thing to let go of. After all, he was once rivals with John Lennon.

Now, if you'll notice by clicking on that link, very little has changed since Lennon and Rundgren were openly insulting one another in music mags. I found the exchange to be very similar to a couple of small-time musicians attacking each other on any comments section of any modern music site. It's oddly comforting.